Fintech Forward 2025 Delivers with 38 Industry-Shaping Partnerships and Strategic Agreements Signed

Signaling strong industry collaboration and global investor confidence in Bahrain's fintech future

MANAMA, Bahrain, Oct. 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Fintech Forward 2025 (FF25), hosted by the Bahrain Economic Development Board (Bahrain EDB) wrapped up on a high note earlier today at Exhibition World Bahrain (EWB) bringing together policymakers, investors, founders, and thought leaders from around the world to shape the future of financial services. Marking its third iteration, this year's edition drew the highest number of sponsors, participants, and partnerships to date, with 38 Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) and strategic agreements signed spanning fintech, digital infrastructure, and financial services—a testament to the growing depth of industry collaboration, and investor confidence in Bahrain's fintech ecosystem.

The island nation, strategically located in the heart of the Gulf, continues to strengthen its global financial services and fintech ambitions. Building on its position as a regional leader in financial innovation, Bahrain brought together industry pioneers at FF25, which attracted around 2,000 attendees and the support of key players across the Kingdom's financial and technology sectors. The region's premier fintech event drew strong international participation from countries across the region and beyond, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States, and India.

Among the milestone agreements announced was the successful pilot of the new Google Cloud infrastructure for payments, a landmark collaboration facilitated by Bahrain Fintech Bay, the National Bank of Bahrain (NBB), Bahrain Islamic Bank (BisB), Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait (BBK), and BENEFIT, enabling instant payments using digital commercial bank money between their clients on Google Cloud Universal Ledger. This state-of-the-art project highlights Bahrain's role as a testbed for next-generation financial technologies and its ability to facilitate meaningful cross-border collaboration.

As part of the event, the Bahrain EDB hosted a delegation from the United Kingdom's Department for Business and Trade (DBT), comprising 70 delegates from 36 fintech companies—the largest delegation the Department has ever led to any country — highlighting the shared commitment to advancing cross-border innovation, financial collaboration, and sustainable economic growth. Among the delegation, three UK companies announced their launch in Bahrain, including Umazi, Ajyad & Valexa, and Aman by Themis, further reinforcing the Kingdom's growing appeal as a gateway for international fintech expansion.

This year's theme centered on "The Era of Integration: The Maturing Age of Fintech" and featured over 40 speakers, including leading global regulators, financial strategists, fintech pioneers, and internationally renowned innovators such as Changpeng Zhao (CZ), former CEO of Binance, and Dhiraj Mukherjee, Co-Founder of Shazam—reinforcing the event's role as a premier global stage for innovation, convening leaders who have transformed industries and redefined how millions worldwide engage with technology and financial services. The event's agenda covered a broad spectrum of topics shaping the future of finance, including the rise of embedded infrastructure, AI adoption, open banking, Islamic fintech, digital payments, and the future of regulation.

Over the past decade, Bahrain has transformed its financial services landscape through progressive regulation, advanced digital infrastructure, and a strong commitment to innovation. As the largest contributor to GDP, accounting for 17.2% of the economy in 2024, the sector drives economic growth while benefiting from a forward-looking regulatory framework led by the Central Bank of Bahrain, the Kingdom's single, agile regulator. Guided by the Financial Services Sector Development Strategy (2022–2026), Bahrain continues to advance innovation, talent development, and sustainable growth, leveraging its strategic location, business-friendly environment, highly-skilled workforce and sophisticated digital infrastructure to serve as a launchpad for scalable, cross-border fintech solutions and a gateway to the USD 2.15 trillion GCC market, solidifying its position as the region's premier destination for fintech investment and collaboration.

Fintech Forward remain central to driving investment, fostering innovation, and shaping the future of finance in the region. With momentum stronger than ever, Fintech Forward will return in 2026, continuing its mission as the region's leading stage for dialogue, collaboration, and transformation in digital finance.

For next year's edition, FF26, visit the following link.

** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **

Fintech Forward 2025 Delivers with 38 Industry-Shaping Partnerships and Strategic Agreements Signed

SINGAPORE, Jan. 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Coda, a global leader in digital content monetization, today announced that it is integrating Unity's In‑App Purchasing (IAP) SDK with Coda's global web store platforms. This collaboration offers developers a single place to manage and optimize their entire digital catalog across mobile, web, and PC - directly through Unity's existing IAP workflow. 

With just a few lines of code, developers can launch secure, branded web stores powered by Coda - offering players more ways to purchase securely while improving their margins.

The integration is powered by Coda's Merchant of Record (MoR) solution, which is already trusted by leading publishers and fast-growing studios worldwide. As the legal seller in each market, Coda manages payments, fraud prevention, tax remittance, invoicing, and compliance across more than 70 markets and over 400 payment methods. This gives developers more time to focus on the game and the player experience.

"As the games industry moves beyond closed ecosystems, developers of every size want more flexibility and control over how they grow," said Shane Happach, CEO of Coda. "Our integration with Unity's IAP SDK gives creators more choice in how they launch and operate their own stores, wherever their players are, minus the complexity of managing global payments or compliance. This reflects Coda's commitment to democratizing game development and helping every studio, large or small, succeed on their own terms."

As web-based purchasing becomes a more practical part of developers' business mix, interest in direct-to-consumer web stores continues to grow. Today, these channels already account for roughly 26% of mobile gaming revenue in East and Southeast Asia, according to research from Niko Partners and Coda.

First-party web stores give developers greater control over pricing, promotions, and player communication, but introduce operational complexity across payments, compliance, fraud, and support. Coda removes these barriers with a scalable payments and risk platform, integrated directly into Unity's workflow.

Coda's integration with Unity's IAP sets a new D2C standard by bringing out-of-app monetization into developers' existing workflows, removing operational complexity, and making it easier to run web stores at a global scale.

Learn more at coda.co.

About Coda

Coda is a global leader in digital content monetization and distribution. We're trusted by 300+ publishers—including Activision, Electronic Arts, and Riot Games—to grow their audiences and revenue worldwide. Our out-of-app solutions include Custom Commerce, a fully customizable web store; Codapay, which enables seamless direct payments through a single API integration on publishers' websites; Codashop, the go-to marketplace for millions of gamers to purchase in-game content; and Distribution, which extends content reach through a network of trusted commerce partners. Founded in 2011, Coda is headquartered in Singapore with a team of 550+ Codans around the globe. Coda recently acquired Recharge, Europe's leading prepaid payments platform.  Coda is backed by Apis Partners, Insight Partners, and Smash Capital, and has been named an APAC High Growth Company (2023) by Financial Times, one of Granite Asia's NextGenTech 30 (2024), a payments leader on Fortune's Fintech Innovation Asia list (2024), and listed among The Straits Times Fastest Growing Fintechs (2024). For more on Coda, visit coda.co.

Press Contacts
Coda:
Liz Adam — VP, Corporate Affairs
elizah.adam@coda.co

** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **

Coda and Unity to enable out-of-app monetization for game developers globally